The Secrets We Carried

by Mary McNear

  “Wait,” she said. “You did that in the parking lot? With all those people around?”

  “No, that’s just it. There weren’t any people around. And I’m fast at stuff like that. You know that.”

  “Jake didn’t say anything to me about running out of gas,” she said.

  “Because he didn’t. Not then. That’s the killer, Quinn. Literally, the killer. I didn’t have time to get all the gas out. A bunch of people came out of the game early. They were getting close, and I didn’t want them to see me, so I stopped.”

  “So . . . it was a stupid prank,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t you tell me about it back then?”

  “Quinn,” Gabriel said, leaning forward, a sense of urgency animating him. “You’re not getting it. I left Jake just enough gas to get to the bonfire and drive out to the middle of the lake.” Quinn wrapped her arms, instinctively, around her. “That’s why he stopped on the middle of the lake. He was out of gas. Otherwise, he would have kept driving to the boat launch on the other side. That’s what everyone does when they drive across. That’s what his brother did. No one stops in the middle of the lake. Not in late March.”

  “Stop.” Quinn held up her hand. “Gabriel, just . . . stop. You don’t know that. You don’t know that’s why he stopped. For all you know, he still had a little gas in his tank.”

  “No, he didn’t,” he said. He rubbed his eyes again, as if to clear them, and in the light from the window, he looked tired, so tired. He kept going. “When they finally towed the truck out of the lake, the police inspected it. My dad knows their guy. Their mechanic. And he told my dad that, as far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with the truck. Nothing that might have made it break down. But the gas tank was empty.” Gabriel leaned back in the armchair, and watching her, he opened his hands, palms up, in a gesture that suggested he’d given her everything. Everything he had. And now he was empty. He was waiting for her to say something, she thought, waiting for her to confirm everything he’d said.

  “But, the truck was underwater. Maybe the gas leaked out of the tank. And that’s why the tank was empty.”

  “No, Quinn. The mechanic said the tank was sealed and there were no leaks. I don’t know, maybe he was wrong. But that’s what he told my dad.”

  “Gabriel,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “for that night, there are so many variables to consider. Maybe, maybe when Jake drove out on the lake, he was running on fumes. Or maybe it was still enough to get him to the other side, and he stopped for another reason. Or maybe, even if they hadn’t stopped, they would still have gone through the ice.” She looked hard at Gabriel, hoping, through sheer force of will, to impress all this upon him. He looked skeptical, as if he’d already gone through each of these arguments in his own defense, summarily discarding every one of them. “Besides,” she said. “There were other things happening that night, Gabriel, that you couldn’t have known about. Things like . . .” She stopped. “Jake’s life was . . . complicated,” she said, searching for a better word and settling on this one. “And whatever you did, when you siphoned off his gas, you did not put him on that lake. Only Jake did that. You have to understand that,” she said, emphatically. She couldn’t let him go on thinking he was solely responsible for this tragedy.

  “What do you mean, ‘other things’?” Gabriel asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “I mean . . .” And Quinn told Gabriel everything she now knew about that night. Absolutely everything.

  Gabriel listened in silence. He looked surprised to hear about Tanner’s text and troubled to hear about Quinn’s lost ring. But he nodded, a little, when she told him about Jake being Jesse’s dad, as though he had suspected as much himself.

  “You didn’t kill them, Gabriel,” Quinn said, when she was done. “And, if you did, then I could say the same thing about myself. So could Annika. Or Tanner. So many things converged that night . . . don’t you see? There was alcohol, and sibling rivalry, and mistakes, and pranks, and a theft, and texts, and lies and secrets . . . In the end, though, it was Jake. He made a fatal decision.” She got up and came over to him, sitting on the arm of his chair. Except for their hellos and good-byes, it was the closest she’d been to him yet. She took his hands in hers. She held them tightly, and an emotion she couldn’t quite read passed over his face.

  “Have you ever talked to anyone else about siphoning the gas?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “Only you,” he said.

  “Gabriel, you cannot carry this whole thing on your shoulders anymore. It was a prank. I know you; you don’t have a malicious bone in your body. And your siphoning gas had nothing to do with Jake’s decision to drive on the lake. Nothing.”

  “I don’t know, Quinn. It’s terrible to think you might have caused an accident that killed three people.”

  “I know. I’ve felt guilty too. For ten years. We all have. Maybe we always will. But feeling guilty doesn’t mean you are guilty. No one committed a crime. No one did anything, intentionally, to harm Jake, or Dominic, or Griffin. We’ve all felt remorse. But we, you, still have to move on. You have to live your life.” Her voice was soft. She was still holding his hands in hers.

  He gently pulled his hands away. She let hers drop back into her lap.

  “I’m glad we talked about this,” he said, sinking back into his chair. And maybe she imagined it, but he looked lighter, younger even.

  “So am I,” Quinn said. I only wish we’d talked about it sooner. But this was not the time for more regret. “Will you come with me? I don’t want to leave here without you,” she said.

  “Quinn,” he said, with a slight smile, and then he shook his head. “I can’t think straight right now. I haven’t slept much lately. I can’t make a rational decision.”

  “Sleep first, then, and think later,” she said. “But stay here.” She didn’t want him to leave. Not after what he’d just told her. She got up from the arm of his chair and moved her suitcase off the bed. “Here,” she said, patting the bed. “You can sleep here.”

  And when he looked doubtful, she went over to him and took him by the arm and brought him over to the bed. “You are too tired to drive. You’ll have to sleep here. After you sleep, we’ll talk.”

  “But what will you do?” Gabriel asked, standing next to the bed, and looking for all the world like the only thing he wanted to do was lie down on it.

  “I have some writing to do,” Quinn said.

  Chapter 34

  March 24, Senior Year,

  Gabriel’s House, After the Bonfire

  After Quinn’s fight with Jake at the bonfire, Gabriel drove her back to Butternut. He was careful to avoid the subject of Jake. He talked to Quinn, instead, about a road trip he wanted to take that summer. He’d spent his whole life east of the Mississippi River, he explained. After graduation, he wanted to go west. As in far west. All the way to the Pacific Ocean. And he was full of ideas about the best routes to take, the best places to camp, the best landscapes to photograph. And Quinn, unused to this prolific, one-sided conversational style from Gabriel, was nonetheless grateful. It required only that she listen, which was all she felt capable of doing. Don’t think about Jake, she told herself. Not right now. Tomorrow, she would think about him. About them. And how what they’d had together was over.

  As they approached Butternut’s lone traffic light, Gabriel slowed. “Do you want to come over? We can watch a movie,” he asked.

  “Aiden and Brody are probably playing hockey with the remote,” Quinn pointed out.

  “Nope. I liberated the DVD player. It’s in my room now. It was the only way to keep Colin from watching Any Given Sunday again. I mean, even I was starting to memorize the dialogue.”

  “Isn’t it mostly grunts?” she asked, but the light had changed and Gabriel was still idling there. She checked her watch. Her dad wouldn’t be home until morning when he got off the night shift. “You know what?” she said. “A movie sounds good.”

  When they got to his hous
e, it was surprisingly, no, shockingly quiet. His parents, he said, were visiting family in southern Minnesota, Brody and Colin were “in the wind,” and Aiden was in his room, trying to write rap music, which, according to Gabriel, who’d heard some of his finished product, was a complete waste of time. He mixed them drinks from his parents’ liquor cabinet and raided his family’s junk food stash for some popcorn. Then they’d retreated to his bedroom, where Gabriel locked his door (this was second nature to him), set their drinks down, and turned on the bedside table lamp. As he riffled through his extensive DVD collection, Quinn glanced around his room. She hadn’t been here since he’d been accepted to RISD back in December. She remembered that afternoon, and the photographs he’d shown her from his college portfolio. How beautiful they’d been, she thought. They were like visualized memories, moments between the two of them that were now frozen in time. She looked around for the portfolio. There was no sign of it. She wondered what he had done with it.

  “How about this?” Gabriel asked, holding up Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Quinn nodded. She’d never seen it before but she knew enough about it to know there were chase scenes, gunfight scenes, jumping-off-cliff scenes—enough action scenes, in short, to distract her from thinking. From feeling.

  “Why don’t you take the bed?” Gabriel said, sliding the DVD into the player. “I’ll take the floor.”

  “Gabriel, there’s more than enough room for both of us,” Quinn pointed out, of his queen-sized bed. She pulled off her boots and sat down, sliding over to make room for him. He came and sat beside her.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, handing her a drink.

  “A little.”

  “I’ll get you something,” he said, leaving the room. He came back and tossed her the macramé throw from the living room couch, which his mother had woven in purple and gold, Minnesota Vikings colors. “You know, you really should take up macramé,” he said.

  “I think I will,” she said, settling it over her. “I think it’s what’s been missing in my life.” She offered him some of the blanket and he slid under it with her.

  “What is this, by the way?” she asked of the drinks he’d mixed for them.

  “Um, I tried to make a mai tai. But I didn’t have all the ingredients. I think it might be more mai than tai.”

  “Or more tai than mai?”

  “Could be.” He smiled. The light from the bedside table lamp lit up his slightly messy light brown hair. His bedroom windowpanes rattled in the wind, and, as Quinn snuggled under the throw, a ragged little sigh escaped her.

  Gabriel looked over at her. “You’re going to love this,” he said as the movie started. And she did. For the next couple of hours, she watched with rapt attention.

  “That was perfect,” Quinn said, draining the last of her syrupy-sweet cocktail from its plastic cup as the credits rolled. “It definitely belongs in our top ten.”

  “Ten? I was going to say top three,” Gabriel objected.

  “Okay, three,” she said, handing him her empty cup.

  “You know,” Quinn said, turning onto her side and facing him. He was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “I think we should take that road trip together. We can drive through the Bighorn Mountains,” she said, of the area where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had their hideout.

  “Definitely. But, just so you know, the movie wasn’t filmed in Wyoming.” He told her then about the filming of the movie and about some of the theories of what had happened to the real Butch and Sundance. It was unlikely, he said, that they’d gone down in “a blaze of glory” as they had in the movie. At the very least, he pointed out, the director’s note at the beginning of the movie— “. . . most of what follows is true”—was a creative interpretation of the word most.

  Quinn listened to him, surprisingly happy. And maybe it was the movie, or the cocktail, or Gabriel’s voice, but she felt relaxed. She hadn’t been alone with Gabriel like this, in his room, to watch a movie or hang out and talk, for a long time. She’d forgotten how much she loved being alone with him.

  “What’s that sound?” she asked now, raising herself up on one elbow and listening.

  “That’s Aiden. Trying to rap,” he said, of the “music” coming from the room next door.

  “Gabriel, that’s awful,” Quinn said. “He’s not serious, is he?”

  “Uh, if by serious you mean he thinks he’s going to get a recording contract, then yes.”

  Quinn started laughing, and Gabriel did too. But then, watching him, she turned suddenly serious. She reached out and touched his face, without even thinking about it. He was still for a moment, so still, and then he leaned over and kissed her. Softly at first. And the kiss was more of a revelation than a kiss. As though it suddenly revealed to her something that she’d kept hidden from herself. He put his arms around her then and pulled her gently to him. And she slid her hands under his T-shirt and felt his smooth, warm back. The kiss deepened. Our lips fit together perfectly, she thought. As though we are supposed to be kissing. As though we are supposed to be together.

  They woke the next morning to someone pounding on Gabriel’s bedroom door.

  “Gabriel, wake up! Open the door!” Aiden shouted. They’d been asleep in each other’s arms, but now Gabriel scrambled out of the bed and pulled on a pair of blue jeans. Quinn sat up, the covers slipping off her. She shivered in the early-morning chill. Gabriel brought Quinn her clothes, which were draped over the desk chair, where he’d put them last night. As she started getting dressed, Gabriel called out to Aiden, “I’ll be there in a minute.” Aiden pounded again.

  “Aiden, calm down,” Gabriel called, as he pulled on his shirt. “I’m coming.”

  He opened his closet door and motioned for Quinn to stand behind it, so Aiden wouldn’t see her. Then he smiled at her and, holding her face, kissed her on the forehead. “He’s probably looking for the Froot Loops,” he said, as he went to open the door.

  QUINN SET HER computer down on the end table beside her. She wasn’t satisfied with what she’d written. She’d need to work on it some more. She’d stopped writing before she’d gotten to the part where Gabriel had opened the door and Aiden had told him that Jake and Dominic and Griffin had drowned in Shell Lake. Before she’d gotten to the part where she jumped out Gabriel’s window and ran all the way back to her house on Webber Street. Before her life had changed forever. Before whatever it was she and Gabriel had begun, had embarked on, was cut short.

  Still, she had one thing to show for writing this scene. Self-knowledge. She understood now, sitting here in the cabin at Loon Bay, that the night she’d spent with Gabriel had become tangled up in her mind with Jake’s death. At the time, she could not untie the two. There had been no way forward with Gabriel. It was as though there’d been some invisible causation at work, as though the intimacy between her and Gabriel had mysteriously compelled Jake and his friends to get into that truck and drive out onto the ice. Yes. This was what she’d feared in the days and weeks after the accident. Was it irrational? Superstitious? Magical thinking? Perhaps. But, in the face of tragedy, the mind had its own way of explaining the inexplicable. Unfortunately, she’d never talked to Gabriel about any of this. Unconsciously, she’d ruled out the possibility of a romantic relationship between them the moment she’d heard that Jake had died. But then, instead of talking to Gabriel about the accident and about their night together and giving the two of them a chance to heal, she’d shut down and shut him out. And then she’d left Butternut. And during that time, and the time since then, Gabriel had been wrestling, alone, with his own guilt—a guilt that in many ways must have eclipsed her own.

  Quinn looked at her watch now. It was almost noon. Her suitcase was on the floor. Gabriel, lying on his back, one arm thrown over his head, was on the bed. She got up and tiptoed over to him. His face, in sleep, with the guardedness and reserve fallen away, was beautiful. She studied him. She could do this all day, she thought, and never get tired of it. But she di
dn’t want him to wake up with her staring down at him, so she moved away, back to the armchair she’d been sitting in. She leaned over and closed her laptop, still on the end table.

  “Quinn?”

  She looked over at Gabriel. He was half sitting, propped up on his elbows behind him.

  “How long did I sleep for?”

  “A little over an hour,” she said.

  He sat up and put his feet on the floor. “I don’t think I could have driven home,” he admitted. “I was so tired. Have I delayed your departure?” he asked, gesturing at her suitcase.

  Quinn came and sat down, gingerly, on the bed beside him. “No. I told you, I want you to come with me.”

  “What makes you think I can just pack up and leave?” he asked.

  “Because you can,” she said. “You’re renting your cabin on a month-by-month lease. And the caretaking business? That won’t heat up until closer to Memorial Day. I was going to leave this morning, but I can leave tomorrow. That will give you time to do whatever you need to do.” He stood up and stretched, then looked at her quizzically.

  “Gabriel, you haven’t left this area in ten years. The open road is calling.” She smiled. “It’s time to go. Time to move. Time to mend,” she added. And she felt something like exhilaration saying these words.

  He smiled and leaned against the cabin wall. “First you come to Butternut and never seem to leave, and now you’re leaving but you’re insisting that I go with you.”

  “Well, why not?” she said. “What have you got to lose? Ten years ago, we were planning a road trip. Remember? The Grand Canyon, the Badlands, the Bighorn Mountains, the Mojave Desert, Monument Valley Tribal Park, Yellowstone . . . One week, Gabriel. I’m asking you for one week.”

  He laughed. “That’s a lot to see in one week,” he said, before turning serious. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not about knowing,” she said. Her heart was beating hard. He leaned toward her, fractionally, and even this subtle movement filled her with happiness. “It’s about living.”